For the last couple weeks, starting shortly after the Republican convention, something has seemed out of place to me about the McCain campaign, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. No, not the obvious things, not the fear mongering and mud-slinging, nor the erratic changes in policy and off-kilter economic proposals; all those are of a part, but not incongruous in and of themselves.
What’s been bugging me is something more elemental. Something subtle and systemic that seems out of place for a seasoned campaigner like a John McCain. Odd little things, things that shouldn’t happen the way they do. Things like McCain’s “I approved this message” tag coming at the end of the attack ad rather than the beginning. (The hard and fast rule: end a positive message with you candidate’s voice & image, end a negative message with your opponent’s scary visage.)
Other techniques don’t add up either. McCain parroting Obama’s text in his own speeches, for example, which can only remind the viewer that someone else has said the same thing first – and quite possibly – better. These are things McCain should know better than to do. So why’s he doing them, I wondered?
Then it hit me, and it was obvious it nearly knocked me off my chair: He isn’t trying to win!
I know, it sounds completely improbable, but let me offer and alternative narrative for the McCain's last few weeks, a different framing through which to view tonight's debate.
It's the run up to the Republican convention and time to pick a running mate. The man John McCain really wants is a moderate and pro-life. The GOP base has already nixed that idea, however. He's backed into a corner, having already sold most of his soul to get to this point and now saddled with yet another repellent compromise, his POW experience kicks in. He'll do what he has to to live another day, he'll bite the bullet and do what his handlers suggest. But he sure as hell won't like it.
And so, deep in his heart of hearts, he hatches a plan. He'll do it their way, he'll pick the running mate they want, run the campaign they say he must, but if it all goes tits-up -- and he's got a very real and constantly gnawing gut feeling that it's going to -- and his career and reputation look like they're going crash upon the rocks, he sure as hell isn't going down alone.
If he has to take on the mantle of all that is wrong with the GOP in order to be "their man", a technique he knows will fail nevertheless, he's gonna make damn sure said mantle is so discredited that no good man will have it foisted upon them ever again. Ever.
McCain's appearances have the feel of performance art because that's exactly what they are. He's playing the caricature of a GOP candidate. He's embodying everything he knows & hates about his own party, the people that wouldn't accept him as he was, and he's spitting it back at them with a smirk and a nod, knowing full well it'll be their collective downfall.
In order to get on the ticket he's made himself into their Frankenstein monster, and if that's the case, now he's got no choice but to rampage and destroy -- at least until the gentle townsfolk rise up and burn him, his creators, and their precious, monolithic "castle on a hill" down to the very ground from which it once swelled.
Watch closely tonight and, when the mask slips, you'll see it in his eyes.
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